Conversica, Inc., the leader in Intelligent Virtual Assistants (IVAs) helping organizations attract, acquire and grow customers at scale, announced today it has raised a $20 million Series D funding round led by Hollyport Capital, an existing investor of Kennet Partners, Conversica's lead Private Equity investor. This growth equity round brings Conversica's total amount of institutional capital raised to $89 million since the company first pioneered the market for true AI-powered IVAs to serve as virtual team members and autonomously engage contacts, prospects, customers or partners in human-like, two-way interactions at scale. Previous investors participating in this funding round include Providence Strategic Growth (PSG), Toba Capital, and Savano Capital Partners.

This Series D funding round comes after the company saw a strong second quarter in 2020, despite the global economic instability resulting from COVID-19. In fact, COVID-19 has resulted in Conversica's overall network operating at 20 percent higher than its peak in pre-COVID times, due to businesses now operating predominantly in an online or digital world.

Conversica has enjoyed a historic 40 percent year-over-year growth, and these new funds will be used to continue its growth through investments in Sales, Marketing, and Partner Ecosystem. Additionally, the round allows the company to further invest in its Intelligent Automation Platform product development and engineering.

"We were well-positioned to raise new capital even in these troubling times," said Jim Kaskade, CEO of Conversica. "I was invited in by two respected private equity groups, PSG and Kennet Partners, to optimize the business and accelerate profitable growth. In under two quarters we achieved profitability and coupled with a mature historic growth year-over-year of 40 percent, we had overwhelming interest in our business."

"Many companies raise new capital to sustain their unprofitable operations while growing. In this case, we focused solely on adding cash to the balance sheet for growth," said Kaskade.

Kaskade also believes that Conversica is well positioned to expand its operations inorganically through acquisitions, which is why it has been working with the global M&A and advisory firm, Macquarie Capital, on strategic and capital initiatives since Kaskade's arrival in October of 2019.

Conversica's growth amid a tumultuous economic climate proves there is rapid and rising demand for Intelligent Automation technologies as many businesses struggle to retain existing customers as well as acquire new ones. An augmented workforce of Intelligent Virtual Assistants accelerates customer retention and customer growth for mid-market and enterprise businesses and provides customers with the digital transformation tools they need to succeed in an increasingly challenging market.

"Conversica's value proposition is changing the way businesses interact with customers," said John Carter, Chief Executive of Hollyport Capital. "We view Intelligent Virtual Assistants as an innovative opportunity to optimize the workforce and build customer loyalty at scale, completely transforming the way revenue-generating teams operate."

Conversica plans to focus its go-to-market activities on larger organizations, specifically mid-market and enterprise companies that have significantly invested in their digital capabilities. These companies require a mature partner to augment their revenue-centric workforces with Intelligent Virtual Assistants.

Engaging with your most precious asset, your customers, to help accelerate revenue is much more complex than simply answering frequently asked questions (FAQ) - an early application for virtual assistant technology. With over a decade of experience, no one offers the trusted, human-like AI-powered augmented workforces, like Conversica. The company has expanded on its early success in its Conversica Sales AI Assistants supporting marketing and sales departments, now offering a number of IVA applications that support post-sale revenue retention and growth in customer success and finance departments, as well as industry specific IVAs through their partner ecosystem.

The company also plans to further its technology leadership by applying new capital to open up its platform for partners and application developers to customize their virtual assistant conversations. The company is expanding its omnichannel offering to include website chat, social messaging, and voice endpoints. With these new developments, Conversica is hyper-focused on putting its Intelligent Automation tools into its customers' hands and directly impacting revenue-generating teams with zero training required, enabling efficient scalability and ROI.

Conversica's Intelligent Automation Platform - a powerful combination of Conversational AI, Deep Learning, Decision and Policy management including action-taking process automation, is built on decades of experience. Powering more than three-quarters of a billion interactions between the AI and people to date, the Intelligent Automation Platform has achieved an audited 98 percent accuracy rate in both properly interpreting a user's intent and correctly taking the corresponding next-best-action. The Conversica Intelligent Automation Platform is the backbone behind Conversica's range of IVA applications that automate personalized, contextual, and highly valuable conversations with customers, with this accuracy at scale. Conversica's Intelligent Virtual Assistants impact every stage of the revenue lifecycle covering both pre-sales and post-sales activities.

This advanced application of Artificial Intelligence technology uses Natural Language Understanding and Natural Language Generation to uniquely create and deliver prompt, polite, and personalized communications that assist revenue-generating teams to attract, acquire and grow customers.

About Conversica
Conversica pioneered the category it operates within, providing Intelligent Virtual Assistants that help organizations attract, acquire and grow customers at scale. A Conversica Intelligent Virtual Assistant is an AI-powered, SaaS-based software application that serves as a virtual team member and autonomously engages contacts, prospects, customers or partners in human-like, two-way interactions at scale to drive towards the next best action accelerating revenue; whether that's scheduling a sales meeting, gauging interest to buy additional products or services, or politely but persistently collecting overdue payments.

Reaching out to over 100 million people on behalf of thousands of companies, Conversica's Intelligent Virtual Assistants are built on a proven and patented platform integrating natural language understanding (NLU), natural language generation (NLG), autonomous action chains and deep learning capabilities that engage prospects over multiple communication channels and in multiple languages. Recognized as one of the fastest-growing companies year over year and ranked among the Deloitte Technology Fast 500, Inc. 5000 and Fast Company's most innovative AI companies. Conversica is a portfolio company of Providence Equity, Kennet Partners, Hollyport Capital and Toba Capital and is headquartered in Foster City, CA.